Well to give a little back ground.
There was a time when I used to love Newsnet, when I came first on the Internet in 95/96, but the historical newsgroups became intolerant when it came to the Luftwaffe. Half of the discussion was based upon how anyone in his right mind could be interested in a Nazi instrument of war. It didn't help if the odd neo-Nazi popped up and started stirring things up.
The noise over data ration became terrible, too much energy was wasted in self defense, too little was gained in terms of knowledge and/or fun.
But IMHO the basic Newsgroup type of BBS is still the best discussion medium, but that is a different story.
Scot Rose had an E-mail newsletter (maybe he still does), which was nice, but not the most efficient way of having a discussion. Of course that wasn't his fault, but that's how E-mail newsletters are.
About that time a friend of mine, Gregor Rozman told me about the free service of Server.com and that's how the old BBS came to be.
Fortunately my old website* had attracted some interest and that's how people started to populate the forum. It didn't take long before the BBS became the primary part and my website secondary.
I think 2000 was the last time I did something with my site and that was mainly cosmetic
When the current forum is basically set, I'd like to start on a fresh website.